The case against a US recession in one chart

Almost every piece of research we've combed through this week has
talked about the possibility of a
recession.

And while there are certainly numerous
global macroeconomic factors for investors to get nervous
about — China, the commodity crash, geopolitical instability in
the Middle East, the interest-rate increase by the Federal
Reserve — the US economy's direction is determined primarily by
one thing: consumer spending.

And this isn't just the consumer spending captured in the
monthly
retail-sales report; it's the total personal consumption as
captured by the Personal Consumption Expenditures measure from
the quarterly report on gross domestic product.

This measure captures spending not only on goods but on services
— think cab fares, haircuts, physical therapy, etc. — which
account for about 85% of US GDP.

Ahead of the housing-bust-induced recession and resulting
financial crisis the US consumer began rolling over, drowning in
what became an unsustainable sea of debt — a combination of
mortgage debt and consumer debt financed from borrowing against
skyrocketing home values — that eventually choked off consumers'
ability to spend any more money.

So ahead of that recession and crisis we saw two major themes
play out in the US economy: People spent more and more of their
income to pay off existing debts and spent less money on
everything else.

Right now, neither of these dynamics is taking place.

The following chart shows the US consumer continuing to spend at
a solid pace while spending the smallest slice of disposable
income on debt in a generation.

Of course, things are never as simple as two data points, and the
dislocations we're seeing in financial markets are in many ways
not at all related to what's happening in the real economy (which
is what we'd argue this chart is really focused on).

But when more and more folks are talking about the risks of the
US economy rolling over and markets seeing a
replay of something like what happened in 2008, it's worth
remembering what things actually looked like before that happened
... and what they look like now.